Haussmann's renovation of Paris
Haussmann's renovation of Paris was a vast public works programme commissioned by French Emperor Napoleon III and directed by his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. It included the demolition of medieval neighbourhoods that were deemed overcrowded and unhealthy by officials at the time; the building of wide avenues; new parks and squares; the annexation of the suburbs surrounding Paris; and the construction of new sewers, fountains and aqueducts. Haussmann's work was met with fierce opposition, and he was finally dismissed by Napoleon III in 1870; but work on his projects continued until 1927. The street plan and distinctive appearance of the centre of Paris today are largely the result of Haussmann's renovation.
This article is about the Victorian renovation of Paris. For the modern renovation of Paris, see Grand Paris (project).Background[edit]
Overcrowding, disease, crime and unrest in the centre of the old Paris[edit]
In the middle of the 19th century, the centre of Paris was viewed as overcrowded, dark, dangerous, and unhealthy. In 1845, the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote: "Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year."[1] The street plan on the Île de la Cité and in the neighbourhood called the "quartier des Arcis", between the Louvre and the "Hôtel de Ville" (City Hall), had changed little since the Middle Ages. The population density in these neighbourhoods was extremely high, compared with the rest of Paris; in the neighbourhood of Champs-Élysées, population density was estimated at 5,380 per square kilometre (22 per acre); in the neighbourhoods of Arcis and Saint-Avoye, located in the present Third Arrondissement, there was one inhabitant for every three square metres (32 sq ft).[2] In 1840, a doctor described one building in the Île de la Cité where a single 5-square-metre room (54 sq ft) on the fourth floor was occupied by twenty-three people, both adults and children.[3] In these conditions, disease spread very quickly. Cholera epidemics ravaged the city in 1832 and 1848. In the epidemic of 1848, five percent of the inhabitants of these two neighbourhoods died.[1]
Traffic circulation was another major problem. The widest streets in these two neighborhoods were only five metres (16 feet) wide; the narrowest were one or two meters (3–7 feet) wide.[3] Wagons, carriages and carts could barely move through the streets.[4]
The centre of the city was also a cradle of discontent and revolution; between 1830 and 1848, seven armed uprisings and revolts had broken out in the centre of Paris, particularly along the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, around the Hôtel de Ville, and around Montagne Sainte-Geneviève on the left bank. The residents of these neighbourhoods had taken up pavement stones and blocked the narrow streets with barricades, which had to be dislodged by the army.[5]
Critics of Haussmann's Paris[edit]
Contemporaneous[edit]
Haussmann's renovation of Paris had many critics during his own time. Some were simply tired of the continuous construction. The French historian Léon Halévy wrote in 1867, "the work of Monsieur Haussmann is incomparable. Everyone agrees. Paris is a marvel, and M. Haussmann has done in fifteen years what a century could not have done. But that's enough for the moment. There will be a 20th century. Let's leave something for them to do."[59] Others regretted that he had destroyed a historic part of the city. The brothers Goncourt condemned the avenues that cut at right angles through the center of the old city, where "one could no longer feel in the world of Balzac."[60] Jules Ferry, the most vocal critic of Haussmann in the French parliament, wrote: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the grand and intolerable new buildings, the costly confusion, the triumphant vulgarity, the awful materialism, that we are going to pass on to our descendants."[61]
Later era[edit]
The 20th century historian of Paris René Héron de Villefosse shared: "in less than twenty years, Paris lost its ancestral appearance, its character which passed from generation to generation... the picturesque and charming ambiance which our fathers had passed onto us was demolished, often without good reason." Héron de Villefosse denounced Haussmann's central market, Les Halles, as "a hideous eruption" of cast iron. Describing Haussmann's renovation of the Île de la Cité, he wrote: "the old ship of Paris was torpedoed by Baron Haussmann and sunk during his reign. It was perhaps the greatest crime of the megalomaniac prefect and also his biggest mistake...His work caused more damage than a hundred bombings. It was in part necessary, and one should give him credit for his self-confidence, but he was certainly lacking culture and good taste...In the United States, it would be wonderful, but in our capital, which he covered with barriers, scaffolds, gravel, and dust for twenty years, he committed crimes, errors, and showed bad taste."[62]
The Paris historian, Patrice de Moncan, in general an admirer of Haussmann's work, faulted Haussmann for not preserving more of the historic streets on the Île de la Cité, and for clearing a large open space in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, while hiding another major historical monument, Sainte-Chapelle, out of sight within the walls of the Palais de Justice, He also criticized Haussmann for reducing the Jardin du Luxembourg from thirty to twenty-six hectares in order to build the rues Medici, Guynemer and Auguste-Comte; for giving away a half of Parc Monceau to the Pereire brothers for building lots, in order to reduce costs; and for destroying several historic residences along the route of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, because of his unwavering determination to have straight streets.[63]